| | | | "Not a conspiracy theory, folks" | | President Trump's quote of the day: "In many places the same person in California votes many times. They always like to say, 'Oh that's a conspiracy theory.' It's not a conspiracy theory. Millions and millions of people..."
Don Lemon on "CNN Tonight:" "It's a conspiracy theory. He's spreading a conspiracy theory. Again, there is absolutely no evidence, none, that millions of people voted illegally. And the fact is, the president himself disbanded his own commission investigating voter fraud back in January. His IT director, in a sworn court document, saying, 'The commission did not create any preliminary findings.' That means they found nothing. So they disbanded the commission..."
--> Some falsehoods matter more than others. This one matters a LOT...
--> For the most part, Trump's media allies aren't defending the revival of his illegal voting fantasy... They're just ignoring it...
--> And this was just one of many examples of presidential misinformation on Thursday... | | | There's been a history of Friday firings in this White House. Is EPA head Scott Pruitt next? Thursday started with W.H. spokesman Hogan Gidley saying "I can't speak to the future of Scott Pruitt." The day ended with the president expressing support for Pruitt. In between: Even more embarrassing revelations about alleged mismanagement. So Trump's sound bite isn't going to end the deathwatch. Fox's banner in the 11pm hour: "TRUMP'S PRUITT TEST..." | | "He will listen more when it is on TV" | | Check out this detail in Josh Dawsey's latest story: "Aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person. 'He will listen more when it is on TV,' a senior administration official said..."
--> Dawsey also reports that Trump and John Kelly gave interviews to Fox's Jeanine Pirro for her upcoming book... | | | "I think that this immigrant crisis is manufactured," Geraldo Rivera said on "Hannity." "I think it's an overreaction to that so-called caravan of 1,000." Meanwhile, Sean Hannity emphasized rapes of migrants, echoing Trump's rhetoric from earlier in the day... | | | This week's "Reliable Sources" podcast is a timely conversation with the WashPost's Callum Borchers... We discussed Trump's slams against Amazon, the Sinclair controversy, and the president's habit of governing via Fox News... Listen via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or TuneIn... | | Hey, we could all use a laugh right about now... | | | ...So here you go: On Thursday morning police in North Versailles, Pennsylvania were called to a report of a "crazy person" talking to herself along Route 30 in East Pittsburgh. When an officer arrived, he found out that the "crazy person" was KDKA-TV reporter Meghan Schiller. She was holding up her phone and hosting a Facebook Live chat about landslides in the area! Schiller streamed the encounter with the officer... It cracked her up... | | -- Thursday's Sinclair updates: Some anchors resisted the promo mandate... Two of those anchors in Oregon were named by the local paper... Deadspin has a detailed new story about the internal resistance...
-- And while on the subject of Sinclair, the National Press Photographers Association issued a statement criticizing the company, and "less than 24 hours later, Sinclair informed the group "that a promised $25,000 donation to our legal advocacy program would not be forthcoming..."
-- Yahoo! chief Washington correspondent Olivier Knox is jumping to SiriusXM... Knox "will provide commentary for all of SiriusXM's political channels" and "host an upcoming weeknight show..." | | The Atlantic "parts ways" with Kevin Williamson | | Oliver Darcy emails: The Atlantic parted ways with Kevin Williamson on Thursday, triggering praise from the left and condemnation from the right. EIC Jeffrey Goldberg told staff about the decision in a memo, writing that Williamson's comments calling for women who have had abortions to be punished by death -- he had suggested this be carried out via hangings -- ran "contrary to The Atlantic's tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace."
Context: Williamson had expressed his abortion views on Twitter in 2014, and Goldberg had previously told staff he did not believe "one's life works should be judged by an intemperate tweet and that such an episode should not necessarily stop someone from having a fruitful career at The Atlantic." But on Wednesday Media Matters uncovered a 2014 podcast in which Williamson reiterated his views. Goldberg told staff that "caused us to reconsider this relationship" because the language used in the podcast "made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent carefully considered views."
Read Darcy's full story here... | | WashPost rejects Trump's "lobbying" claim | | Trump repeated his claim about the Jeff Bezos-owned WashPost being an Amazon lobbying arm twice on Thursday. And The Post published a story covering the issue in detail. "Why Trump went after Bezos: Two billionaires across a cultural divide" is the headline on Marc Fisher's story. It includes new comments from Post publisher Fred Ryan and EIC Marty Baron:
Ryan: "Trump appears to view ownership of a newspaper as a way to assert influence. Jeff sees the value of a strong, independent press. Jeff has never proposed a story, Jeff has never intervened in a story..."
Baron: "The reality is he didn't present any evidence that we were lobbying for Amazon. The reason is because there is no evidence." | | DOJ Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim appeared in the courtroom Thursday to watch the proceedings in the government's lawsuit, CNN's Hadas Gold and Jessica Schneider report. It was the second time Delrahim showed up in the courtroom to observe witness testimony... Gold and Schneider were able to ask him a few Q's...
--> The trial "is going as well as any antitrust case can be going," Delrahim said. He called Judge Richard Leon "great" and said he thinks the trial will conclude by the end of April... | | Revisiting the Comcast deal | | | In court on Thursday, the attorneys honed in on another merger: Comcast and NBCUniversal. Here's the full recap... | | -- Variety's Brian Steinberg interviewed Megyn Kelly for this new profile. "I have to earn the trust of the audience, and I'm willing to work for it," Kelly said...
-- CNNer Ravi Agrawal is the new managing editor of Foreign Policy mag...
-- "The guy who wrote the book on the deep state wishes Trumpworld would shut up about the deep state," Joseph Bernstein writes... | | An up-close look at what local papers are losing | | | Rob Byers worked in the Charleston Gazette newsroom for more than 26 years. He worked his way up to exec editor. HuffPost's Jason Cherkis interviewed him twice this year -- once in February, again in March. The thesis for the interviews: "No editor seemed better suited to cover the American Rust Belt under Trump. He was made for this moment." A few days after the second interview, Byers was laid off, which makes this feature even more of a must read... | | Rupert doesn't want Fox News to cave | | | Rupert Murdoch doesn't want his Fox News Channel giving in to boycott campaigns or other controversies. In a new story for VF, Gabriel Sherman says Murdoch instructed Fox News co-prez Jack Abernethy to support Laura Ingraham after the boycott picked up steam last week. "Sources say Murdoch has told people that Fox's current management has been too quick to cave to the network's many critics," Sherman writes... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: An interesting nugget in Gabe Sherman's latest: He says Sean Hannity was overhead trashing Shep Smith to Trump while at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. One source said "Hannity was denouncing Shep and Trump was eating it up." Hannity called the reporting a "total lie," but it's not hard to imagine this happening. Shep recently zinged Fox News primetime, and Hannity at the time responded in favor, saying Shep was "clueless" about what Hannity does on his show every night... | | | Brian Lowry adds: To me, this was really the money line: "The leadership vacuum is causing Fox's internal dysfunction to play out in public -- something that also didn't happen in the Ailes era." Roger Ailes prided himself on maintaining peace among his high-profile personalities, under the philosophy that family squabbles will happen but should never be allowed to spill out into public view... | | Donie O'Sullivan's latest scoop | | Donie O'Sullivan emails: Those 300 Russian troll pages that Facebook removed two days ago? It turns out a lot of their ties to the troll group were obvious months ago...
BUT: When I told Facebook we had figured this out, rather than stonewalling me, they got me on the phone with their head of cybersecurity policy for an on-the-record chat. It was an unusual and surprising move for a company that so often stay mum -- but is reflective of the company's media tour since the Cambridge Analytica scandal...
AND: The guy presented a pretty good case on why they kept some of the pages up for so long. Will the company continue to be so open? I bet a lot of it will hinge on how Zuckerberg fares in DC next week... | | "That would be a paid product" | | Sheryl Sandberg taped several interviews on Thursday... Including this one with Savannah Guthrie for NBC's "Today" show... The takeaway from NBCNews.com: "Users' data are the lifeblood of Facebook, and if they wanted to opt out of all of the platform's data-driven advertising, they would have to pay for it..."
"We don't have an opt-out at the highest level," Sandberg acknowledged. "That would be a paid product." Is that a possibility? | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Australia has launched a formal investigation into Facebook after the company revealed that the information of over 300,000 Australian users may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica... (CNNMoney)
-- FT CEO John Ridding explains how the paper's found subscription success, despite resistance from big tech platforms gunning for free content, on the newest episode of "Recode Media..." (Recode)
-- The majority owner of MoviePass has acquired Moviefone from Verizon's Oath... (CNNMoney) | | New editor of The Paris Review | | | Another instance of a woman replacing a man accused of sexual harassment: Emily Nemens, a co-editor of The Southern Review, is the new editor of The Paris Review, replacing Lorin Stein... The NYT has the details here... | | It's been six months since the very first Weinstein story | | Chloe Melas emails: Six months ago today the Weinstein scandal first rocked Hollywood. Lisa France, Sandra Gonzalez and myself broke down the timeline of events from October to now. The thought on all of our minds – it's only been six months?
Megan Thomas adds: In editing the piece, I was re-inspired by the courage of those who shared their stories of abuse, as well as by the thorough reporting. I was also reminded how rapidly the story and its fallout unfolded... | | | Julia Waldow emails some recommended reading: CJR's Yardena Schwartz profiles the "silence breakers" in the news industry who are often blacklisted for coming forward with allegations of sexual assault and harassment "by the same news organizations that have applauded the culture's current referendum on sexual harassment..." (CJR) | | A Hollywood dinner for MBS | | | Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman "was fêted Wednesday at a Hollywood dinner hosted by power producer and director Brian Grazer and wife Veronica, plus WME-IMG boss Ari Emanuel," NYPost's Emily Smith reports. Guests included Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger, Robert Kraft, Ron Howard, Evan Spiegel, Kobe Bryant, Dina Powell, and Shane Smith... | | | Politico's Jake Sherman tweeted that he's "been struck by how MBS has been treated in the US. He imprisoned a large swath of Saudi society. His country is constantly criticized for human rights abuses. Women are akin to second-class citizens. He's an autocrat. And he gets big groups in LA, NY..." | | Brian Lowry emails: Although Al Pacino plays the title role in "Paterno," the best and timeliest part of this disappointing HBO movie about the Penn St. child-sex-abuse scandal has to do with journalism -- namely, how local reporter Sara Ganim doggedly pursued the story despite the university circling the wagons, and how her ability to gradually win over sources contrasted with national reporters who parachuted in to cover the story. (Ganim, it's worth noting, is currently a CNN correspondent and served as a consultant on the movie.)
Otherwise, the Emmy-bait film exhibits some of the same flaws as the Bernie Madoff movie "The Wizard of Lies," which Barry Levinson also directed, by joining the fall of a powerful man in the equivalent of the fourth quarter, as everything unraveled... | | | Brian Lowry emails: "Blockers" turns out to be a very funny, very raunchy teen sex comedy, although it's really about the parents determined to thwart their daughters' "sex pact" -- a gender flip, given that such films usually focus on boys trying to lose their virginity... Read more... | | "Lorena," a docuseries about Lorena Bobbit for Amazon | | | Megan Thomas emails: Jordan Peele is producing a Lorena Bobbit docuseries, per Vulture: "It's been 25 years since Lorena Bobbitt was tried and acquitted for mutilating her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, and Jordan Peele is going to tell their story. Peele is producing a docuseries called Lorena to reexamine the events 'from her perspective...'" | | | For the record, part four | | | -- Via Lisa Respers France: Dwayne Johnson is finally sharing the backstory to his feud with "Fast & Furious" co-star Vin Diesel...
-- Via Chloe Melas: This is the first look at Meryl Streep in "Big Little Lies..."
-- Lisa adds: Robert De Niro wouldn't mind joining "Big Little Lies..."
-- One more from Chloe: Indiana Jones could be played by a woman, Steven Spielberg says... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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